Niantic plans a “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data

This is pretty cool, but I feel as a pokehunter (Pokemon Go player), I have been tricked into working to contribute training data so that they can profit off my labor. How? They consistently incentivize you to scan pokestops (physical locations) through "research tasks" and give you some useful items as rewards. The effort is usually much more significant than what you get in return, so I have stopped doing it. It's not very convenient to take a video around the object or location in question. If they release the model and weights, though, I will feel I contributed to the greater good.

> I have been tricked into working to contribute training data so that they can profit off my labor

You were playing a game without paying for it. How did you imagine they were making money without pimping your data?

Niantic made 700 million dollars last year, mostly selling virtual game items.

Why would anyone think niantic would protect user-data from profit?

Because not everyone is a seasoned IT professional.

I don't think you need to be an "IT professional" to understand that not paying money doesn't imply that you aren't giving away value.